@scottalanmiller Because it's the lastest LTS release. Isn't using LTS best practice?

No, it's a bad practice. Using something with "long term support" is a good practice, but with Ubuntu it is just a naming thing for marketing purposes. Even Canonical themselves do not recognize it as an LTS. It's just letters that they slap on every fourth release to make it sound like an enterprise product like RHEL. It isn't. Ubuntu is a rolling release will full support only for the latest build. So sticking to LTS is just "not updating" in this case. One of the many reasons that Ubuntu isn't that good. It's not "bad", but it isn't up to par.

Ubuntu is like Fedora, you always want to be on the latest unless there is a compatibility issue. You would never intentionally use an LTS release unless you are doing something like MongoDB which only releases for certain versions. And the answer there is not to use Ubuntu but to use CentOS which is kept up to date.

If you want a true LTS, Ubuntu is not an option for you. RHEL and SLES are the only enterprise long term support options in the Linux world.

Does Long Term Support even matter though? Is that for a situation where you can't upgrade the OS because of some limitation of the software running on top of it?

Assuming the software will run on the latest, isn't that really the only place to be, support and patch wise?

So that's an interesting thought and I lean the way that you are thinking. But you can't guarantee forward compatibility in all cases. So I'd say "it depends." For most things, especially desktops, web apps and non-critical systems, I would go for "rolling releases" like Fedora and OpenSuse Tumbleweed or Ubuntu "current release" to make sure that I was always completely up to date. This eliminates a lot of migration risk and deprecation risk down the road.

But when running apps that needs serious stability, long term testing and vendor support, it is often best to choose CentOS or OpenSuse Leap with super long, very stable release cycles and hard core support so that you can be sure that everything is going to work.

Does Long Term Support even matter though? Is that for a situation where you can't upgrade the OS because of some limitation of the software running on top of it?

Assuming the software will run on the latest, isn't that really the only place to be, support and patch wise?

So that's an interesting thought and I lean the way that you are thinking. But you can't guarantee forward compatibility in all cases. So I'd say "it depends." For most things, especially desktops, web apps and non-critical systems, I would go for "rolling releases" like Fedora and OpenSuse Tumbleweed or Ubuntu "current release" to make sure that I was always completely up to date. This eliminates a lot of migration risk and deprecation risk down the road.

But when running apps that needs serious stability, long term testing and vendor support, it is often best to choose CentOS or OpenSuse Leap with super long, very stable release cycles and hard core support so that you can be sure that everything is going to work.

So we basically said the same thing - I did put the assuming the software will run on the latest bit in there. Of course if the software won't run on the latest, you need to stay on the version you're at.

@scottalanmiller Because it's the lastest LTS release. Isn't using LTS best practice?

No, it's a bad practice. Using something with "long term support" is a good practice, but with Ubuntu it is just a naming thing for marketing purposes. Even Canonical themselves do not recognize it as an LTS. It's just letters that they slap on every fourth release to make it sound like an enterprise product like RHEL. It isn't. Ubuntu is a rolling release will full support only for the latest build. So sticking to LTS is just "not updating" in this case. One of the many reasons that Ubuntu isn't that good. It's not "bad", but it isn't up to par.

Ubuntu is like Fedora, you always want to be on the latest unless there is a compatibility issue. You would never intentionally use an LTS release unless you are doing something like MongoDB which only releases for certain versions. And the answer there is not to use Ubuntu but to use CentOS which is kept up to date.

If you want a true LTS, Ubuntu is not an option for you. RHEL and SLES are the only enterprise long term support options in the Linux world.

@scottalanmiller Why aren't ubuntu LTS releases trully considered as having long term support? I usually use Centos but I do have several Ubuntu LTS boxes and from their documentation they appear as having long term support.

@scottalanmiller Why aren't ubuntu LTS releases trully considered as having long term support? I usually use Centos but I do have several Ubuntu LTS boxes and from their documentation they appear as having long term support.

Because Long Term Support suggests that when things break, they fix them and provide support. But Canonical doesn't do that. If things really break they tell their LTS clients to upgrade to the latest non-LTS release to continue getting support. True LTS support never requires "going to the non-LTS release" to continue getting support. The label LTS and their "support marketing timelines" are just made up marketing.

I know shops that in 2011 were already being told by Canonical that to get support they had to leave 10.04 LTS because they would only try to fix things in the 11.04 or 11.10 releases. 10.04 has major stability bugs that were just ignored because the 11 series fixed them. The LTS theory is that fixes would be backported. But they are not. Canonical just uses LTS to fool customers, they do not mean it to mean that they will support the product.